ng's ticks? What
we've got to do is to jolly well keep them in the field all day if we
can, and be jolly glad it's so beastly hot. If they lose about a dozen
pounds each through sweating about in the sun after Jackson's drives,
perhaps they'll stick on less side about things in general in future.
Besides, I want an innings against that bilge of old Downing's, if I
can get it."

"So do I," said Robinson.

"If you declare, I swear I won't field. Nor will Robinson."

"Rather not."

"Well, I won't then," said Barnes unhappily. "Only you know they're
rather sick already."

"Don't you worry about that," said Stone with a wide grin. "They'll be
a lot sicker before we've finished."

And so it came about that that particular Mid-term Service-day match
made history. Big scores had often been put up on Mid-term Service
day. Games had frequently been one-sided. But it had never happened
before in the annals of the school that one side, going in first early
in the morning, had neither completed its innings nor declared it
closed when stumps were drawn at 6.30. In no previous Sedleigh match,
after a full day's play, had the pathetic words "Did not bat" been
written against the whole of one of the contending teams.

These are the things which mark epochs.

Play was resumed at 2.15. For a quarter of an hour Mike was
comparatively quiet. Adair, fortified by food and rest, was bowling
really well, and his first half-dozen overs had to be watched
carefully. But the wicket was too good to give him a chance, and Mike,
playing himself in again, proceeded to get to business once more.
Bowlers came and went. Adair pounded away at one end with brief
intervals between the attacks. Mr. Downing took a couple more overs,
in one of which a horse, passing in the road, nearly had its useful
life cut suddenly short. Change-bowlers of various actions and paces,
each weirder and more futile than the last, tried their luck. But
still the first-wicket stand continued.

The bowling of a house team is all head and no body. The first pair
probably have some idea of length and break. The first-change pair are
poor. And the rest, the small change, are simply the sort of things
one sees in dreams after a heavy supper, or when one is out without
one's gun.

Time, mercifully, generally breaks up a big stand at cricket before
the field has suffered too much, and that is what happened now.
At four o'clock, when the score stood at two hundred and twenty